| Henry VI's conquest of Sicily | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 Henry VI entering Palermo | |||||||||
| |||||||||
| Belligerents | |||||||||
 Kingdom of Sicily |  Holy Roman Empire | ||||||||
| Commanders and leaders | |||||||||
| William III of Sicily (POW) | Henry VI | ||||||||
| Strength | |||||||||
| Unknown | Unknown | ||||||||
| Casualties and losses | |||||||||
| Unknown | Unknown | ||||||||
Henry VI's conquest of Sicily was a conquest led by Holy Roman Emperor Henry VI for the inheritance of the Kingdom of Sicily.
William II of Sicily had stated that, should he die without having any children, he wished to be succeeded by his aunt Constance. However, Constance was married to Henry VI, a member of the Hohenstaufen family that was widely disliked within Italy. Because Constance was connected to the Hohenstaufen family, William's cousin Tancred of Lecce seized the Sicilian throne instead after William died in 1189. Henry ascended to the title of Holy Roman Emperor in 1190, and the following year, he and Constance led an invasion of Sicily to inherit the kingdom. The 1191 invasion failed due to pressure from Italian citizens and military failures, culminating in the 1191 siege of Naples, during which Constance was captured. [2] [3]
After Tancred's death in February 1194, the throne of Sicily passed to his young son, William III. Henry capitalized on the change in ruler to launch a second invasion of Sicily that May. This time, the conquest proceeded smoothly: Henry's forces occupied Naples in August and entered the Sicilian capital of Palermo on 20 November 1194. William III was tortured and blinded, and Henry VI assumed the kingship of Sicily. [4] [5]
The Hohenstaufen dynasty, also known as the Staufer, was a noble family of unclear origin that rose to rule the Duchy of Swabia from 1079, and to royal rule in the Holy Roman Empire during the Middle Ages from 1138 until 1254. The dynasty's most prominent rulers – Frederick I (1155), Henry VI (1191) and Frederick II (1220) – ascended the imperial throne and also reigned over Italy and Burgundy. The non-contemporary name of 'Hohenstaufen' is derived from the family's Hohenstaufen Castle on Hohenstaufen mountain at the northern fringes of the Swabian Jura, near the town of Göppingen. Under Hohenstaufen rule, the Holy Roman Empire reached its greatest territorial extent from 1155 to 1268.
Frederick II was King of Sicily from 1198, King of Germany from 1212, King of Italy and Holy Roman Emperor from 1220 and King of Jerusalem from 1225. He was the son of Emperor Henry VI of the Hohenstaufen dynasty and Queen Constance I of Sicily of the Hauteville dynasty.
Tancred was King of Sicily from 1189 to 1194. He was born in Lecce, an illegitimate son of Roger III, Duke of Apulia by his mistress Emma, a daughter of Achard II, Count of Lecce. He inherited the title "Count of Lecce" from his grandfather and is consequently often referred to as Tancred of Lecce. Due to his short stature and unhandsome visage, he was mocked by his critics as "The Monkey King".
William I, called the Bad or the Wicked, was the second king of Sicily, ruling from his father's death in 1154 to his own in 1166. He was the fourth son of Roger II and Elvira of Castile.
Constance I was the Queen of Sicily from 1194 until her death and Holy Roman Empress from 1191 to 1197 as the wife of Emperor Henry VI.
William III, a scion of the Hauteville dynasty, was the last Norman King of Sicily, who reigned briefly for ten months in 1194. He was overthrown by his great-aunt Constance and her husband Emperor Henry VI.
The Kingdom of Sicily was a state that existed in Sicily and the south of the Italian Peninsula plus, for a time, in Northern Africa from its founding by Roger II of Sicily in 1130 until 1816. It was a successor state of the County of Sicily, which had been founded in 1071 during the Norman conquest of the southern peninsula. The island was divided into three regions: Val di Mazara, Val Demone and Val di Noto.
Henry V, the Elder of Brunswick, a member of the House of Welf, was Count Palatine of the Rhine from 1195 until 1212.
Margaritus of Brindisi, called "the new Neptune", was the last great ammiratus ammiratorum of the Kingdom of Sicily. Following in the footsteps of Christodulus, George of Antioch, and Maio of Bari, Margaritus commanded the kingdom's fleets during the reigns of William II (1166–1189) and Tancred (1189–1194). He probably began as a Greek pirate and gradually rose to the rank of privateer before becoming a permanent admiral of the navy. In 1185, he became the first count palatine of Cephalonia and Zakynthos. In 1192, he became the first Count of Malta.
Nicholas of Ajello was the second son of the Sicilian chancellor Matthew of Ajello and the archbishop of Salerno from 1181, when he succeeded the historian Romuald Guarna. He was a trusted advisor in the Norman Kingdom of Sicily at the time of its fall to Henry VI, Holy Roman Emperor (1194).
Matthew of Ajello was a high-ranking member of the Norman court of the Kingdom of Sicily in the 12th century. His brother John was a bishop.
Henry of Kalden was a ministerialis in the service of the German kings Henry VI, Philip, Otto IV, and Frederick II.
Sibylla of Acerra (1153–1205) was Queen of Sicily as the wife of King Tancred. After Tancred's death, she was regent in 1194 for their son, King William III. She was the sister of Count Richard of Acerra.
The House of Hauteville was a Norman family, originally of petty lords, from the Cotentin Peninsula in Normandy.
The history of Sicily has been influenced by numerous ethnic groups. It has seen Sicily controlled by powers, including Phoenician and Carthaginian, Greek, Roman, Vandal and Ostrogoth, Byzantine, Arab, Norman, Aragonese, Spanish, Austrians, British, but also experiencing important periods of independence, as under the indigenous Sicanians, Elymians, Sicels, the Greek-Siceliotes, and later as County of Sicily, and Kingdom of Sicily. The Kingdom was founded in 1130 by Roger II, belonging to the Siculo-Norman family of Hauteville. During this period, Sicily was prosperous and politically powerful, becoming one of the wealthiest states in all of Europe. As a result of the dynastic succession, the Kingdom passed into the hands of the Hohenstaufen. At the end of the 13th century, with the War of the Sicilian Vespers between the crowns of Anjou and Aragon, the island passed to the latter. In the following centuries the Kingdom entered into the personal union with the Spaniard and Bourbon crowns, while preserving effective independence until 1816. Sicily was merged with the Kingdom of Italy in 1861. Although today an Autonomous Region, with special statute, of the Republic of Italy, it has its own distinct culture.
Erbreichsplan is a German word meaning "plan for a hereditary empire". It refers to the proposal of Henry VI, Holy Roman Emperor (1191–1197), to abolish imperial election and make the Holy Roman Empire hereditary within his family, the Staufer. This would effectively have combined the Empire and its three kingdoms—Germany, Italy and Burgundy—with the hereditary kingdom of Sicily, which belonged to Henry and his heirs in right of his wife, the heiress Constance. Since Sicily was a papal fief, this plan was strongly opposed by the Papacy. It also failed to generate sufficient support among the imperial princes.
Henry VI, a member of the Hohenstaufen dynasty, was King of Germany from 1169 and Holy Roman Emperor from 1191 until his death. From 1194 he was also King of Sicily as the husband and co-ruler of Queen Constance I.
Jordan Lupin was the first count of Bovino in the Norman kingdom of Sicily. He played a major role in the final years of Norman rule and first years of the Staufer dynasty. Twice he was involved in opposing crusader armies passing through Sicily. In the second instance, he led a revolt, apparently in the hope of seizing the throne. He was successful in attracting significant support, and was even crowned anti-king, but was ultimately captured and executed.
The siege of Naples was a siege in 1191 during the expedition of Henry VI, Holy Roman Emperor aiming to conquer the Kingdom of Sicily in name of the claim of his wife Empress Constance. It lasted three months before Henry abandoned his expedition, after suffering a heavy loss due to disease. After his retreat, the Sicilians set a counterattack that almost reconquered his conquests and captured Empress Constance. It was particularly rare in the history of war that an empress was captured in an imperial offensive campaign.